A slicing article by Bill Laurance (incidentally, he will be speaking at The University of Adelaide on 26 June). Originally published in The Ecologist.
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What do the Australian Environment Foundation, the Renewable Energy Foundation and the Global Warming Policy Foundation have in common? They are all fiercely anti-environment – and we must beware their ‘eco-doublespeak’.
George Orwell would have appreciated the Australian Environment Foundation. That’s because Orwell was a master of doublespeak – where words take on purposely obscure or opposite meanings.
Despite its name, the Australian Environment Foundation is not pro-environment. In fact, I consider it anti-environment, at least by the prevailing definition of that term.
For instance, the AEF opposes wind farms, many mainstream efforts to combat climate change, and what it labels “green thuggery” – such as initiatives to make cattle ranching more environmentally benign via the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef.
World Heritage Sites – who needs them?
In Australia, the AEF likes the Tony Abbott government’s efforts to remove World Heritage listing for 74,000 hectares of native forests in the Tasmania Wilderness World Heritage Area, to promote industrial logging.
In fact, the AEF likes it so much that it’s written to all of the members of the 21-nation World Heritage Committee, urging them to back the government’s bid when they consider it in Doha, Qatar this month.
If the government is successful, it will only be the second time in history that a natural World Heritage site has been de-listed.
A recent director of the AEF is Alan Oxley, an industrial lobbyist and former Australian trade ambassador who’s spearheaded opposition to numerous environmental initiatives around the world. Read the rest of this entry »
ConservationBytes.com 